Fed-up neighbors want a vacant St. Louis hospital cleaned up. Could a buyer come through?

Urban explorers love vacant hospitals .

Stephanie Botkin should know — she lives across from one, the former St. Alexius Hospital on Jefferson Avenue. “They’re totally attracted to it,” Botkin said. “Because you've got the morgue, and how scary is that? You've got the old operating rooms with all the equipment still in them.

“There's something about abandoned hospitals, like where people lived and died,” she continued. “Are there ghosts? Are there spirits?”

While Botkin may not know for sure about ghosts, she and her neighbors do know they’re fed up with the condition of the campus at the now-shuttered site. They say it’s become a massive eyesore and a potentially dangerous hazard.

Botkin claims in the three years that it’s been vacant, there have been break-ins — by metal scrappers,